On 19 June 2026, Marine Bussard successfully defended her MA dissertation, “The Representation of the US Penitentiary System in African American Literature,” at our department. In her dissertation, Marine examined how contemporary African American women authors portray the impact of the prison-industrial complex on Black families and communities.

While working on the project, Marine had the opportunity to meet acclaimed novelist Tayari Jones, whose fiction is discussed in the dissertation, during a book-signing session at the International Literature Festival Dublin in May 2026. Encounters such as these remind us how academic research can bring students into direct conversation with the writers whose works inspire literary scholarship.